bin

bargain-bin

1. adjective Sold at an extremely low or reduced price; very inexpensive. The term comes from a bin or some other container in a store or shop where very inexpensive items or those at greatly reduced prices are sold. I found these great bargain-bin sneakers on the clearance rack at the shoe store.

2. adjective Of very poor or inferior quality; having very little or no value. It's no wonder your bargain-bin phone has stopped working. If you want a phone that lasts, you have to pay the price for it.

loony bin

n. an insane asylum; a mental hospital. Today’s loony bins are far different from those of just a few decades ago.

sin-bin

n. a van fitted with bedding as a place for necking and lovemaking. Willy said he was saving his money to buy a sin-bin so he could have more fun on dates.

loony bin

Insane asylum. The word “lunatic” comes from the word for “moon”; madness was associated in many cultures with the effect of the phases of the moon on the human mind. From lunatic came loony, and loony bin was where insane people were incarcerated. The phrase is now considered insulting in the extreme, as are “booby hatch” (originally a covered passageway down a ship deck), “funny farm,” “drool academy,” and “foam rubber city” (a reference to padded cells).

In a 1996 pilot program, 15 neighborhoods throughout the city were given 90-gallon blue bins with wheels to make it easier to take them to the curb, and lids, which made for a cleaner operation and protected paper from rain that would make it unrecyclable.

In addition, the city allowed the residents to dump all of their recyclable material into the bins without sorting it, a job that the city gave to the contractor who buys the material.

The large blue bins also could be used with normal automated trash trucks, so the fleet of specialized trucks could be reduced.

A survey found that 92 percent of the residents preferred the blue bins because they were larger, had wheels and lids, and did not require presorting, Hackney said.

Because the best results from the pilot program were in the West Valley, that section of the city received the first roll-out of large blue bins, which arrived between September and December of 1997.

The larger bins and greater participation more than doubled the volume of material being recycled.

The blue bins were rolled out in East Los Angeles and the downtown area last month.

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